Directions: Read the following text and
choose the most suitable heading from the list A-F for each paragraph. There is
one extra heading which you do not need.
A.The Decade of Internet Revolution
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B.The Era of National Misfortune
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C.The Era of Misplaced Anxiety
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D.The Decade of Great Feats
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E. The Decade of Youth Heroism in Distress
F. The Decade of Great Imbalances
The first decade of the new millennium has
come to an end. It’s become a sort of habit to give a representative name to
each decade, so, once again, an effort is under way to find a term to fit the
years from 2000 to 2009.
80. __________
That shouldn’t be too hard a job for us
here in China. First, no country has seen economic growth in the last decade
like this. The economy quadrupled, with almost double-digit annual growth, and
GDP went from No.6 to No.3. It’s now only slight below that of Japan, and many
are saying that it will only be another year or two before we have the world’s
second largest economy. In addition, in 2008, China was host to the Olympics,
possibly the best organized and hosted Games over, and that impressed the world
and boosted Chinese confidence.
81. _________
The economy developed at a breakneck pace,
and personal wealth mushroomed--- for many, anyway. Salaries multiplied, stock
market investment and real estate were a bubble, then burst, then became a
bubble again. China now has one of the largest collections of millionaires and
billionaires in the world, and has helped keep the world’s luxury products
industry from going under. Meanwhile, the earnings gap has widened in an
unprecedented way. Millions are still living near the poverty line and the
urban poor has become an obvious problem.
82. _________
Yet, how could we think of the changes
without including the Internet? If one thing can be credited with making the
most changes in people’s lives, it should be the World Wide Web. We learned to
use e-mail, chatrooms, and BBS at the beginning of the decade, and, after
witnessing one dotcom burst, it’s time for the second Internet entrepreneurial
wave. This time, however, it’s in the form of social networking sites like
Facebook, Twitter, and Kaixin, as well as video-sites like Youtube and Tudou.
83. __________
Oh, and who could forget the many
misfortunes, and the tragedies, that befell China in the last 10 years: mining
accidents that killed dozens at a time, a public health crisis like SARS, or
the disastrous Wenchuan earthquake that destroyed towns and thousands of
family. We seem to have a disproportionate share of tragic things happening
here. At the same time, the Chinese, especially younger ones, have shown
an amazing ability to recover from these disasters and be stronger and more
unified. Millions of young volunteers poured into Sichuan to offer their help,
as they did in other emergencies.
84. ___________
The West has a generally darker view of
this past decade. One of The New York Times articles in mid-November said that,
in thinking about a name from the American point of view, it seems difficult to
find the right expression for so much upheaval, change, and worry: the Y2K
millennium bug, which never caused much damage and chaos, the alleged weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq, which were never found; and so on. The United
State launched two wars after 9/11, but never realized that the real threat to
American interests lay in its own economy and finances until the sub-prime
crisis, erupted in 2007.
Others find it an almost impossible job to
name the decade, saying it will take many years to name the 2000s because it
will take many years to figure out what we feel that we lost during that
period.